Guest post by Dave Battey
Gove Street’s namesake on Snoqualmie Ridge had quite a varied career even before moving to our valley.
Captain Gove circles the horn to the west coast
Cap Gove, as his friends called him, was born in 1838 in Edgecombe, Maine to a family of sailors. He first came to Seattle in the late 1860s as captain of the bark Somosett (a three-masted sailing ship) and decided to make Seattle his home. Marrying Angeline Light in December 1862, they soon traveled to the west coast around the Horn when in 1864 he became master of the Cora Mandela and established himself on the San Francisco-China route. He is considered a pioneer sailor in the Northwest, having built and commanded the local steamers Gleaner, May Queen and Glide, some of the first steamers on Puget Sound and associated rivers.
Gove builds its fleet
Gove bought the steamer Celilo in 1874, then bought the steamer, Black Diamond, from the Tacoma Mill Company, using it in the working trade for a year, then built the Gem, which he led for four years on the White River and other routes. . The Gem was destroyed by fire and he built the steamer Glide, which he operated for a year in the Skagit River trade, followed by his construction of the steamer Cascade, which he operated on the Snohomish and Snoqualmie rivers for about three seasons.
Incorporation of Snoqualmie Hop Ranch
In 1882, Cape Gove abandoned its maritime habits (while still owning the Puget Sound steamboats for a few years) and entered into a partnership with Richard Jeffs and DK Baxter. Gove bought about 1,200 acres above the falls from Snoqualmie Valley pioneer Jeremiah Borst and his wife Kate Kanim Borst, who later settled in Fall City. The area was the largest of the traditionally tended grasslands that the Snoqualmie Tribe had tended prior to their purchase by the Snoqualmie Hop Ranch. Gove, Jeffs and Baxter planned to grow hops on the land between what would later officially become, in 1889, the towns of Snoqualmie and North Bend. Cap Gove managed the Hop Ranch for the company.
What are hops?
Commercial hops are a European introduction, first grown in North America in 1629. Hops are used for one thing: flavoring and preserving beer. Puyallup pioneer Ezra Meeker began farming hops in 1865. By the 1880s Ezra was a well-to-do hop farmer, selling hops on the international market and paving the way for other hop ranches to prosper in Puget Sound Country.
Hop vines in western Washington were trained on split cedar poles. They die to the ground every winter and come out of the ground in the spring. The salable “fruit” resembles a small, light yellow Douglas fir cone and is picked and dried for sale. Once planted, it comes back year after year without needing much care.
The “largest hop ranch in the world”
The Snoqualmie Hop Ranch was quickly dubbed “The Greatest Hop Ranch in the World”. The image below, an artist’s rendition of the Upper Snoqualmie Valley in 1889, helps us understand just how serious this operation was and how much area it covered.
At its peak, it took nearly 2,000 pickers to harvest the hops. Most of them were Native Americans from across the Northwest, with some coming from as far away as the Fraser River Valley and Haida Gwaii in Canada and Alaska. Hop Ranch partner Henry Levy spent many years recruiting 1,200 to 1,500 pickers in British Columbia using the kinship network within the region’s tribes through his brother’s marriage to Emma Levy, a member of the Haida. Their camp was on the island formed by what is now the Mount Si Golf Course quagmire and encompassed the current Snoqualmie Dog Park. Harvesting took about two months, but many stayed three months to participate in traditional social networks, trade and additional harvesting opportunities. Many pickers only accepted silver dollars.
What was Cape Gove REALLY like?
Snoqualmie Valley Museum Assistant Director Cristy Lake found and extracted the Autobiography of Erastus Johnson personal comments from the 1890s to help us understand the captain from someone who worked for him as a carpenter. “Captain Gove was a singular man, in some respects: a rough old tar, but born to rule, and in that respect suited to his present position, for there were a thousand people of every possible character to manage. I have always looked up with a sense of deep respect, if not reverence, on the face of an old sea captain.……Captain Gove was rough, profane, nasty, but on the whole I liked it much better than many others I’ve known outwardly polite and even religious We have another look at the man in the centenary history of the Snoqualmie Methodists (available for purchase at the museum of the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Society), which discusses contributors to the church by citizens who were not official members: “The first example that comes to mind is that of Captain George W. Gove… …who bought an organ and seventy-two hymns and organized a choir around 1898.”
The End of Commercial Hop Growing in Western Washington
By the end of the 19th century, too many entrepreneurs were growing hops – all over the world. Soon the income from selling dried hops on the world market was less than the cost of running the farm. Then a “hop louse” or aphid infested the crop and increased spray costs. By 1900 the Hop Farm had been sold and was growing potatoes, and in 1904, with Arthur W. Pratt as owner, it became a major dairy farm. Today, 460 acres of the original hop ranch are protected open spaces – Meadowbrook Farm Park – jointly owned by Snoqualmie and North Bend and managed by the Meadowbrook Farm Preservation Association.
Cape Gove sells its property
Cape Gove’s personal assets were substantial. He owned all the land from the river to what became Highland Drive. An obituary from October 6, 1924, Snoqualmie Valley Record notes: “Many of the Valley residents remember the owner of the Monte Vista Farm and the 160 acres at the present location of the Western Fuel Pension………” Cap Gove sold his home and personal land to the Snoqualmie Falls Lumber Company (later Weyerhaeuser) in 1918 and returned to Seattle. The mill built the Riverside neighborhood of the town of Snoqualmie Falls on its property.
Cape Gove influenced other Snoqualmie pioneers. His close neighbors in Seattle included the Reinig family. He invited them to visit him in the valley. The Reinigs were so taken with the beauty of the valley that they purchased 120 acres of land just down the road from Captain Gove at what is now 41502 SE Reinig Road. The family moved to the valley in June 1890 and lived in a house on the Hop Ranch while their new house and barn were being completed. The Reinig Ranch is still in the family.
[Dave Battey, the Official Historian for the City of Snoqualmie and member of the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Society Board]
